15 Tips for Rebuilding Your Brand

Whether you are starting a new job, taking on a new position in your current company or simply considering a career change, the following suggestions from Deutsche Telekom’s Hans Christian Schwingen are definitely worth taking to heart. 

Entering a new organization can be daunting no matter the size, but when that company has a quarter million employees and a matrix structure so complex that it is incomprehensible even at the top level, the challenge is even more intense.  Schwingen faced such a challenge when he left Audi and joined Deutsche Telekom in 2007 as its Vice President of Marketing and Branding. The company image was in a slump, with low customer satisfaction, little direction for the employees on how to best compete and all the symptoms of an ailing giant struggling to keep up with the rapid changes within its industry. However, within a few years, Schwingen was able to turn the image of the organization around, reinvigorate the employees with a new mission and use innovative brand strategies that earned Deutsche Telekom the award for “best brand change of 2011.”  By using “below the line” marketing techniques, Schwingen was able to make his campaign go viral much more effectively than only through traditional T.V. and radio spots.  By staging impromptu concerts (You should see what surprises they have lined up for their Christmas campaign!) and even a live “Angry Birds” event, which gathered huge crowds, Deutsche Telekom has redefined its company image. See below for the video that highlights some of the events they have put on around the world.

Mr. Schwingen joined the Berlin School of Creative Leadership for a day and shared his 15 tips for not only managing a new job in a complex organization, but how to create immediate impact and lasting change. 

1.  Do not take a job unless you are convinced you can influence future decisions.
*Schwingen knew he was taking on a challenge entering Deutsche Telekom, with the German government as its major stakeholder. However, he made sure there was confidence in his abilities from the top before he accepted the position, so that he would have the backup to begin institutional change.

2. Start studying the organization 2 months before beginning a job. Get familiar with widely diversified top down networking.

*Here is a look at the structure Schwingen confronted when joining Deutsche Telekom. Understanding the current structure was pivotal to being able to make changes and knowing who would be in charge of implementing his ideas.

3.  Make a concise plan of what you must complete in the first 3 months of the job.
*Bill Roedy, former CEO of MTV International, who also spoke at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership stressed this same piece of advice. He said what you do in your first 90 days of a leadership position will set the tone for the rest of your career.

4.  Before you start, analyze where the brand is and where you would like to develop it.
*Schwingen decided that Deutsche Telekom had to understand its weak points and figure out what its positive attributes were in order to gain the confidence of the public and encourage its employees to believe in the new mission. Instead of trying to market their connection speed, which was historically poor compared to some competitors, he wanted to convey Deutsche Telekom’s stability as a company and its mission to connect the world.

5.  After starting a job, work on your 3-month plan consistently and get to know the people on the ground.
*Schwingen familiarized himself with not just managers but also the people who would be implementing the new brand image and conveying it to customers.  He gathered important change leaders together and made his face known throughout the company.

6.  Give off a presence without being obtrusive. Ask questions, observe and ask “who will join forces with you and who will not?”
*It is important to know who in the company will be behind your plan and help spread that energy throughout the organization. Just as important, you should know who will not support it and then you can decide how to control the situation before it spreads throughout the team.

7.  Use clear language so colleagues will know what you mean.  Confusing and scattered language can destroy even the most ambitious projects.
*In 2008, the T-brand family had confusion about the T-brand portfolio. It was cluttered, with many names for different services without a clear sense of identity and direction.  Schwingen said this led to consumers viewing the umbrella brand as weak. He set out on a path to connect the various services with a single, easy-to-understand brand.

8.  Drive both the content related and the structural orientation of your area forward. It is essential to get empowerment from the very top and an official business mandate in order to convince others to take on the new challenge.
*The CEO of Deutsche Telekom sent a memo out to the staff introducing Schwingen and also throwing his support behind the rebranding effort. This led to the rest of the team being more willing to follow Schwingen’s new plan.

9.  Regarding a brand change, draw up your concepts three or four months after starting a job and have the backing of the management. Base it on substance that is deliverable and measurable.  Use this as a brand filter for the development of new brands and services, e.g., does the new offer fulfill the brand promise?
*Schwingen first made important changes to brand marketing, saying “the core of our brand is an emotional brand promise. Our brand promise is based on what we actually do.” A brand promise is also a sketch of what the company will be in the future and is a good filter for making decisions on products on services. Asking the simple question, ‘does this fulfill our brand promise?’ can help filter out what services the company should actually invest in. When Schwingen arrived, there were 6300 products. Using the brand promise “Life is for sharing” helped Deutsche Telekom filter out the services that lived up to that brand and cut out the services that didn’t.

10.  Go on a road show with your concept in order to take colleagues and important stakeholders with you on your way.
*When promoting Deutsche Telekom’s new brand image, Mr. Schwingen went to 70 road shows in a year.  He also made sure to talk to the corporate communications team about the new brand image. A rule of thumb: don’t talk about yourself; talk about the topic.

11.  Use your direct communication with management in a psychologically smart way rather than being demonstratively aggressive. Pursue a mission by convincing, never by threatening.
*Schwingen wanted to assert his authority but also earn the trust of his employees, so he showed him the way rather than forcing it upon them. By gaining trust and confidence from your team, you can create evangelists who will help get others on board to do the job and do it well.

12.  Push for measures that provide you with the quickest possible recognition to establish credibility.
*An immediate move Schwingen made was to put the big Telekom “T” on what was before just a non-descript building. Instead of asking for permission, he made it happen in order to create immediate impact.

13.  Introduce a tool to sustainably measure success and make it a component of the management target agreement.
*By implementing a few immediate changes regarding customer service, such as a quicker response time to calls and a clearer focus on serving customer needs, complaints went down by 50 percent. Having measurements allowed the team to see results and it increased accountability in all the different departments.

14.  Use every opportunity to make it internally and externally clear that brand management is a matter of uppermost management.
*Schwingen had every decision regarding the rebranding go through his office in order to ensure consistency among the wide array of products and the diverse offices under the T-Brand around the world.

15.  Make your personal success a shared success.
*With the best rebranding award, Schwingen said he made sure to not steal the limelight and include other key members of the team in the celebration. It leads to a sense of ownership among the others and a stronger commitment to live by the new brand.

You can read about the challenge of creating the new brand in the book Brand Driven Change.

A commercial featuring some of the events Deutsche Telekom has organized to establish its new brand tagline “Life is for Sharing.”

Please see video of the tour to Deutsche Telekom’s innovation labs below:

Trafalgar Square Flash Mob

Royal Wedding Dance: www.youtube.com/watch

Angry Birds Live: www.youtube.com/watch

Creative Entrepreneurship: Reaching the next level

5 Questions on… 
Creative Entrepreneurship: Reaching the next level
In this edition of 5 Questions, we talk with Leonard Sommer, co-founder of the advertising agency Sommer+Sommer and an Executive MBA student at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. His company is releasing a new campaign for Nintendo’s Wii game console featuring tennis star Steffi Graf. We talk to Leonard about the leadership skills and tools that have helped him build a successful agency, and the inspiration behind his agency’s newest creation.

Q: You started your agency with your brother when you were just 20. What was it like running an agency without much experience?
My brother Gordon and I have always made a good team and we’ve always been able to trust each other. Even though we’re so different, we’ve always been close and done things together. When we founded the agency, Gordon was still studying economics, and he remains the agency’s strategic brain today. I’d just finished studying graphic design in Florence.

We were young and free, and not desperate to earn money by producing specific solutions for clients. We wanted to create something new – so when we presented ideas to clients, we were fearless, passionate and eager to take risks. This ultimately gave us a lot of self-confidence in creating, developing and presenting outstanding ideas. And that’s exactly what our clients wanted: new approaches and people who believed in them. They weren’t interested in experience or marketing tools. They just wanted our brains.

We invested everything we had in the agency and in the quality of our work. Making money wasn’t a priority when we were 20. Neither of us had our own family – our staff was like our family!

Q: What tools have you used to make your agency run more efficiently?
In the first 10 years, efficiency and profit weren’t driving factors. We practically lived in the agency, and our employees were like a bunch of friends, who shared our goal of making an impact. Only in the last 7 years have we focused more on efficiency. Working nights while you eat pizza is fine when you’re 20, but when you’re 35, leisure and family time become more important – even if you’re still dedicated to delivering the best to your clients.

So we focused on tools to help us deliver leading quality in less time. It may sound basic, but a simple iCal solution helps us fill capacities while minimizing confusion, overlaps and overtime. Everyone on the team knows what needs to be done, so they’re more satisfied and results are better.

But the right and the left hemisphere of Sommer+Sommer are our main tools. Gordon is still the Left and I am the Right Hemisphere, and bridging the gap between the two hemispheres makes us the most efficient.

Q: What have you learned as a student at the Berlin School that has helped you in your business?
I think one of the biggest insights so far has been learning about Michael Conrad’s approach. He always teaches his students to focus more on people’s intrinsic value, not just their experience and professional skill set. It taught me how to focus on the human side of the team again, something you often forget when you’re on the business side. The composition and vibe of an agency’s team is just as important as the way it’s structured.

Also, learning about the Action Method has changed the way I think. Now, I force myself to be more concrete. It really helps me to focus and lead with an action-oriented approach.And sharing my thoughts with students from different backgrounds and countries has taught me a lot about leadership, the industry, and my strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur.

Q: Tell me a little bit about your new ad for the Nintendo Wii. What was the process you went through with your client to help them solve their business issues with your campaign?
Together with the client and the media agency, we analyzed the product’s potential with regard to new target groups which had not been directly focused on in the past. Which target group would be the most attractive? Which selling proposition the most effective? And what barriers must be overcome? Following this, we pinpointed specific insights for each of the target groups so that we could focus on the most effective sales argument. Then we discussed how to maximize awareness of the communication campaign, as well as its credibility. After finalizing the strategic planning, we drew up a variety of proposed executions to bring the ideas to life. Parallel to this, we talked to Steffi Graf so that we could integrate her thoughts on using the product into the campaign. Her experiences with Wii make her a particularly credible advocate not just for sports games, but for family gameplay in general. We wrote the scripts and storyboards for our campaign with this in mind. To produce commercials that are as authentic as possible, we used provocative interview questions during filming instead of standard scripting to generate natural and honest answers. Ultimately, we successfully produced four commercials that vividly showcase Steffi’s genuine thoughts and show highly authentic use of Wii based on the insights of our target groups.

See the Nintendo Spots including english subtitles here:

Read more: http://sommer-sommer.com/english/news.html

Q: Where do you hope to go from here?
JS: We already have a wide variety of different clients in the world of consumer goods. Our work is varied: today contact lenses, tomorrow stock exchanges, the next day toys – then next week fashion and next month maybe cheese! I hope our agency will always be able to work for as wide a variety of clients as it does now. Aside from that, I enjoy working with people of different nationalities and working on communications in different languages. That’s something I really appreciate about working with clients like Nintendo.

Jeff Jarvis President's Lecture now online.

Creative Faculty member's film at the Berlinale

Congratulations to Joao Daniel Tikhomiroff for the Berlinale film festival screening of his new film, Besouro ("Beetle"), the biography of Brazil's most famous Capoeirista, Besouro Manganga.

Here's the Besouro trailer.

Joao Daniel directed the film, one of the largest productions in Brazilian history, which tells the story of Besouro's life and struggle to help free Brazil's ethnic African population from economic slavery in the 1920s. Besouro became a legendary master of the African-inspired fighting dance, which grew out of Afro-Brazilians' being unallowed to own weapons. With action director Huan-Chiu Ku (Kill Bill, Matrix) the film has spectacular stunt sequences and a soundtrack featuring Gilberto Gil, Rica Amabis, Tejo and other Brazilian stars.

Photo: Joao Daniel (left) at the Besouro premiere last night in Berlin with the film's stars Jessica Barbosa and Aílton Carmo

Last September Joao Daniel delivered a joint master class and President's Lecture at the Berlin School on the subject of Mixing -- the model he has developed for his company that spans advertising, TV and film production.

You can also watch Joao's Tent Talk on the subject with fellow Berlin School Creative Faculty member Tony Segarra.

Jeff Jarvis and Peter Guber - unexpectedly aligned

Two of the highlights of the recent USA module for the EMBA program were speaking appearances by Jeff Jarvis and Peter Guber.
One is a thought leader on the digital transformation and its affect on traditional media, especially print journalism. The other is a legendary Hollywood production company head, former studio boss and record label founder.

Our Faculty Director David Slocum listened closely to them and found some suprising similarities in their messages.

"For me, the crucial thread running through these shared ideas is a committed openness to change – in industries and institutions, in teams and in individuals, and perhaps most in the romantic ideas we tend to harbor about the individual leader or writer."

Read the whole post and David's list of parallels here.

One Minute of Silence for Haiti

Just sent to us from Alumn Alexander Jaggy.....

Dear Friends of the Berlin School

The horrible earthquake in Haiti made our agency come up with a simple idea of micro-donation. In cooperation with Caritas and Universal Music we launched:

One Minute of Silence for Haiti.

Download "One Minute of Silence for Haiti" on amazon.de. All proceeds go to Caritas for first aid and to help rebuild the country.

Just imagine what happens if "One Minute of Silence for Haiti" enters the charts and we well have 60 seconds of silence on the radio... ⎼

The link to the song:

http://bit.ly/bqgAqL

Thank you for sending this request to all your friends.

Please join our group on Facebook "One Minute of Silence for Haiti".

Thanks,

Alexander Jaggy

Seamless Mind

We got an update from Sergio Mugnaini, a 2009 graduate and Interactive Creative Director of Almap/BBDO Brazil, which was runner-up for Agency of the Year at Cannes last year.

Sergio has just launched a new, open-source magazine, Seamless Mind, which is looking at issues of branding and communication from a borderless perspective. The magazine's format is open source, allowing you to view it online, download a pdf, order a printed version and share as you would like. It's well worth a look - www.seamlessmind.is

And Sergio reunited with two fellow classmates, Matthias Spaetgens and Sergio Alcocer for a Brazilian new year's celebration at the beach.

Filip Nilsson Lecture -- Small but Excellent

When we have President's Lectures at the school, the speakers from big global companies often pack the house. They are usually grappling with the challenge of running large, or sometimes even global organizations. That's interesting, but often strikes me as trying to steer a supertanker. Not something many of us do.

I often prefer it when speakers from smaller companies give a lecture. It seems closer to the daily experience most of us have -- working in small teams and small organizations.

Filip Nilsson was one of my recent personal favorites among our lecturers for this very reason. In November he gave a look behind the scenes at how a 120-person agency in Sweden's No. 2 city has managed to win Agency of the Year in Sweden for an astounding 15 consecutive years. And not just in Sweden alone: Forsman & Bodenfors consistently wins some of the top awards at global advertising festivals like Cannes Lions, meaning they are doing work that sets new global standards.

Filip's lecture title was "because we're different," and he laid out some key structural reasons why his agency has developed a company culture that achieves excellence.

The main points I took away were:
1. They have a radically democratic corporate structure, with 27 equal partners each holding just under 4% of the company. That's not a typo.
2. Since no one is going to get stinking rich atop this structure, they also try to focus on having real lives too (although in the early days they were workaholics anyway)
3. They have no clear company heirarchy; decisions are made as a group the way Indian tribes used to decide-- by the power of interpersonal persuasion.
4.  They are small by choice, having resisted the constant temptation and offers to either grow bigger or sell themselves to a large holding company.
5. Despite being small, they hold themselves to high standards of creative excellence.
6. The creative work-in-progress is always placed in the middle of the room so that everyone in the company is exposed to it and can offer feedback. It generates crowdsourced creativity.

This structure leads to problems too. It can take a couple of years for new employees to learn the unwritten organigram that everyone has in their heads (who is respected, whose word carries weight, etc.)

But it has obviously worked very well for Forsman & Bodenfors.

The complete lecture is now online, as is Michael Conrad's Tent Talk with Filip. Thanks again to Filip for his visit and inspiration.

November EMBA module comes to a close in London

Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, our recent EMBA module featured perhaps the most fireworks of any module yet. The John Hunt Presidents' Lecture is already online, and we'll soon post the equally fascinating lecture from Filip Nilsson.

There was a day spent at the Falling Falls conference that included Chancellor Angela Merkel and Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, and some of the participants scored tickets to see U2s historic show in front of the Brandenburg Gate. There were visits to Freemantle and the BBC in London, plus a fun PechaKucha night in Berlin where we all learned from Saadi that the white donkey is a symbol of Damascus.

Godfathers Seymour Stein and John Gough shared time with the group, and thanks to Professors Osman, Greenwald, Seebacher and Tabatoni for their hard work in the classroom.

The next module comes at the end of January in the USA, and we're already excited about what's in store.

Stefan Sagmeister collects Lucky Strike Design Award

It's not every day that music artist Lou Reed delivers a laudatio, but that's what Creative Faculty Member Stefan Sagmeister received this week in Berlin. Stefan, who will be meeting our EMBA participants in New York during the upcoming USA module, collected the prestigious Lucky Strike Design Award for his work and was introduced by Reed, for whom Stefan designed album covers.

Image: Stefan speaks at the awards presentation.

The award is given by the Raymond Loewry Foundation, named in honor of the father of American industrial design.